The Upper Jaw

When the poles last shifted in 10,500 B. C. and we fell in consciousness, Drunvalo says we stopped breathing in the ancient way that we had practiced for so long. We started breathing in the way that we do now, which is very unusual. Hardly anyone else in our universe breathes this way.

In general, there are two things which we take in when we breathe. There is air and there is prana. Prana is life-force energy itself, more vital than air for our existence. Prana is not just in the air, it is everywhere. There is nowhere that it is not; it even exists in a vacuum or a void.

Prana exists as an energy field connected so closely with spirit that spirit cannot exist without it. If you take air away you have a couple of minutes before you die; if you take water away you have even more time; and if you take food away you have more time still but if you break prana from spirit, death is instantaneous. So taking in prana with breath is a crucial act in sustaining our form of life.

We are supposed to breathe such that, while air comes in through our mouth and nose, we take the prana in through the top of our heads—that is, what once was the soft spot on the top of our heads. Simultaneously, we take the prana in from below through the perineum. The prana channel through the body is about two inches in diameter and extends about eight inches above the head and eight inches below the feet. It connects with the crystalline grid around the body. The prana then comes from above and below the body and meets in one of the chakras.  The chakra in which the prana meets depends on where you are mentally, emotionally, and dimensionally “tuned.” This is a very specific science.

After the poles shifted we stopped breathing in this manner and started taking in the prana through our mouth and nose directly with the air. The prana then bypassed the pineal gland in the center of the head. The pineal gland is an eye, the third eye, not the pituitary gland. It is shaped like an eyeball, round, hollow, and has a lens for focusing light and color receptors. It is designed to receive light from above to go to every cell of the body instantaneously. As it is shaped like an eye it is also a vesica piscis, the image which comes out of the first day of Genesis. This geometrical shape is the beginning of all creation, and contained with it is all sacred information of the universe.

When the pineal gland is not activated, however, it turns off. Normally this gland should be about the size of a quarter but in us it has become the size of a pea because we haven’t used it for about 13,000 years. The direct result of turning off the pineal gland is polarity consciousness—good and bad, right and wrong.

Because of the way we breathe we see things in terms of good and evil, but in fact there is no such thing as polarity. Everything actually has three components—the holy trinity—and no matter what polarity you think of there will be a third element to it, for example’ with hot and cold, there is warm, up and down gives you middle, etc. From higher dimensional levels of existence polarity is just an illusion. Unity is all there is; there is just one God and one Spirit that moves through everything. All that ever occurs then is occurring because of the one God.”

From “Nothing in This Book is True, But It’s Exactly How Things Are”  Bob Frissell

I’m sure you’re wondering what in the world this has to do with the upper jaw. Well, the upper jaw is the entrance to what Mr. Frisell calls the prana channel, which in singing is the windpipe.

If the upper jaw is not elevated sufficiently, this channel does not open to allow the air to enter the body sufficiently high and low enough to facilitate a complete breath. Therefore, we have only taken the air through the mouth and nose, and, as has been stated, not activated the pineal gland. Prana, our life-force has not activated the pineal gland. We remain blinded by our conscious mind.

The pineal gland is actually how we can intuit music. It awakens us to our creative power. In comic strips it is the light bulb going off when the character has realized or remembered how to do something. Without the prana energy entering the body behind the facial muscles, the pineal gland does not get activated, and we have no third dimension to our thinking or to our sound. This third dimension consists of a triangle from the lowest opening of the body possible, the highest opening of the body possible, and this causes the throat chakra to open to its fullest extent.  Without this complete breath happening, in simple words, the brain {pineal gland} is not activated, and the throat {prana channel} is closed. The only method of opening the throat chakra is by breathing in this manner.

We often hear of breathing through the mouth--this only dries out the cords.  Taking a breath through the nose is just as useless because it only allows breath to enter above belt level. The secret is to elevate the upper jaw as far as possible, line the bottom jaw parallel to it, park the tongue on the roof of the mouth, tip of  tongue resting behind the bottom front teeth,  then allow the breath to enter the body behind  the sinuses, thus opening up all the resonating chambers. As the air enter, it fills the diaphragm to the very bottom of our bodies—the perineum, and allows the air to activate the pineal gland—the top of our head. The back of the head should naturally stretch open, and the uvula moves further away from our facial structure and remains down to allow the air to enter completely into the body. In the quote from the book, “the prana comes from above and below the body and meets in one of the chakras.” Chakras are energy centers which must be open and spinning to fulfill their purpose in our bodies. Otherwise this energy is blocked, and the life-force energy does not flow through us as the body was designed to do. 

“During singing the mouth should always be open and the upper and lower teeth should be apart about a finger’s breadth. The muscles of the cheeks, between cheek bones and nose, should be lifted until wrinkles appear under the lower eyelids. This movement should lift the upper lip and corners of the mouth. The upper lip should stand away from the upper front teeth slightly like a trumpet. Make a forward motion with the lips, like a pout or as in kissing. There should be space between the inner side of the upper lip and the front teeth. The upper lip must never lie flat and tightly against the front teeth, the corners of the mouth must never be drawn down. About six upper front teeth should always show, now matter what vowel or consonant one sings. In closed lip consonants the lower lip is brought up to meet the upper one, not vice versa.”

Again an excerpt from “A New Guide to Good Singing”  Gerda Nielsen

What she is saying here is that the elevated upper jaw is a result of the cheek muscles being lifted up toward the lower eyelids. This will feel very strange to us. Too smiley—like a Cheshire cat—and yet this is what Mr. Frissell is talking about. We have forgotten to do this when we allow the body to take a breath. The human physiognomy has not changed that much, but how we use our facial muscles has. We have become unconscious of this fact. How we breathe is very unusual, and yet earthlings have done it now for a period of 13,000 years. No wonder it feels so strange and takes time to accept this information. We can exist without this prana in our breathing, but true singing does not exist without it. Singing without this life-force energy is lifeless. We are constantly dropping the upper jaw to meet the lower one, when in fact, as Ms. Nielsen states, “the upper and lower teeth should be apart about a finger’s breadth.” It feels as though we are somewhat bucktooth. In this position, eventually the lower jaw can drop away to accommodate a vowel or volume of sound, but the top jaw always remains in this elevated, not held,  position—along with the cheek muscles—which allows the windpipe to remain open and allow the energy to pass through our bodies with no interference. Some advice has been given students about holding a pencil between your teeth to cause this to happen, but I have found that this tightens the jaws—and that is exactly what one does not want to do. Elevated but flexible is the rule. This formation then allows all the muscles of the face their own freedom and degrees of relaxation and contraction of these muscles conform to the needs of the vocal mechanism, not the usual collapsed position of the facial muscles in our everyday life. 13,000 years of incorrect breathing has collapsed our facial muscles. A few of our great singers unconsciously remembered this secret, but really had no conscious knowledge of it. Now everyone can be tuned in to this forgotten information. It is the awareness of the importance of doing this that helps us to change the habit of breathing through the front of our face, and begin remembering to breathe in the back of our neck where the windpipe and cords are located.

Much of the trouble with the upper jaw is our native language. The face tends to hang in an unelevated position to speak, hence using facial muscles in the incorrect way. Any insistence on more and more diction will only lead to bad vocal production. If the upper jaw is trained to return to its proper position, the muscles of the face can take their proper responsibility for pronouncing and diction will return. Then there is really little need to emphasize diction because singing becomes talking on air. The elevation of the upper jaw to accomplish this cannot be overemphasized. So often a singer is urged to “drop the jaw” on high notes, or “open the mouth” for proper singing. The upper jaw of course is not held high tightly, but neither should it be haphazardly dropped to accommodate the old habit of relaxing the face. Then relaxing the face translates to collapsing the jaw. Opening the mouth does not open the throat—as a matter of fact, it more often closes the throat by dropping the upper jaw when the lower jaw opens. These two must learn to coordinate with each other so as to accommodate the open throat. If one remembers to speak and sing with an elevated upper jaw—much like a ventriloquist—the results will be much faster in coming. Any variations of color, volume, high notes or low notes, will be taken care of by Nature itself. The sound becomes a unit—One Sound--not separate entities. 

When the voice is working on the life-force energy it transforms itself. Now the brain has enough oxygen to “see” itself sing through the pineal gland. All the worry about high and low notes now becomes a moot point. They only became a problem because we have not activated the prana when we took the breath. All the talk about how difficult a piece of music is begins to leave when we reawaken the prana. When we begin to see that everything is really just One thing, that most incredibly efficient computer, the human brain, takes over and does the work for us—much like the computer I’m typing this newsletter on right now. It is very difficult to sing without this life-energy. As a matter of fact, it’s impossible to sing correctly without it, because instead of seeing it, we’re always looking for it. The rest depends on whether we have faith enough to allow the body to work for us, or whether our egos insist we manipulate the voice to our own satisfaction.

“In our state we tend to think that we live inside this body, that everything “our there” is separate from us, and that our feelings and thoughts don’t manifest beyond ourselves. We think that we can hide our thoughts and feelings and they have no impact “out there.” This is simply not true. Everything that we think, feel, and do is creating our whole world all the way out to the most distant stars. We are creating everything in every moment, more so than we could ever imagine.”

Last paragraph of PRANA  from “Nothing in This Book is True, But It’s Exactly How Things Are”    ISBN 1-883319-01-3    by Bob Frissell

In singing, this is of utmost importance for us to remember. Our singing should reflect all these thoughts and images, and impact the world. The world is waiting for us to rediscover this prana energy and send it out to the Universe. That is our duty and our joy. What a marvelous experience to give to oneself and the world this great gift of human sound.  And please do it with a huge smile on your face. Let the whole world know that you are enjoying yourself. The planet is getting healed with this sound, and that is why the impact of our true sound is so crucial.